A Quip is a Joke
"The only time my education was interrupted was when I was at school."
George Bernard Shaw exemplifies the characteristic of a jolly quip. At best, the listeners are surprised into laughter by paradox, bathos, and unanticipated conjunctions. Another great Irishman, Oscar Wilde, entertained his friends at the Cafe Royal with remarks like these:
"True friends stab you in the front."
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
These urbane Irishmen were not, of course, sole masters of the art.
The irascible W.C. Fields taught us many a valuable lesson, not least: "Start the day with a smile and get it over with." Groucho Marx was another verbal maestro. His brand of Marxism, if less profound, was more entertaining than Karl's: "Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse." In the eighteenth century, the great essayist, poet, man of letters, Samuel Johnson (not to be confused with Boris Johnson) entertained his many admirers and, in particular, his biographer, James Boswell, with fine deflationary remarks such as: "He is not only dull, he is the cause of dullness in others."
The art of the quip is not, of course, solely the province of men. Dorothy Parker was one of the shinier lights of the Algonquin Round Table group which met for lunch daily at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929.
Her reputation as a poet and writer of very fine short stories has sadly and unjustly declined. Stories such as "Big Blonde" (Big-Blonde.pdf (unica.it)) reveal a subtle, nuanced talent. But, she is best remembered for such witty remarks:
"The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed'."
"Don't look at me in that tone of voice."
"I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid."
These quips are subversive, disrupting expectations, a catalyst for seeing something new in the human comedy.
QUIP is No JOKE
I love quips and could go on and, tediously, on, but I have to tell you that the word has another meaning in the context of education abroad. In capital form, QUIP (Forum's Quality Improvement Program) draws us not to the louche bar of the Cafe Royal or, indeed, to the faded glories of the Algonquin Hotel on 44th Street in New York City. Instead, we divert our attention to the pleasant town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania - the home of the Forum on Education Abroad. This town has a remarkably interesting cemetery with notable Civil War graves.
Night life is, however, rather more restricted than that of New York or London. I have spent many happy days in Carlisle while serving on the Forum Board from 2006 to 2012. However, after dinner in one of Carlisle's fine restaurants, it was customary to go more or less straight to bed.
More recently, from August 2020 to March 2021, my time was heavily committed to working with colleagues on collating CEA CAPA's application for renewal of QUIP status which is earned after a self-study and rigorous review. We may have been one of the last organizations to go through the process given that the program has been suspended in response to the pandemic.
QUIP is not institutional accreditation, but it represents almost the only way in which "providers" can demonstrate alignment with best practices as defined by community standards. Formal accreditation is only open to degree-awarding institutions and QUIP serves an analogous function for organizations serving US higher education abroad.
So, sadly I am writing, metaphorically at least, in the past tense. QUIP required organizations to pause for a period of introspection: to think about what we do, how we do it, and, most significantly, why we do it. Most of our time is spent in what and how, the administrative imperatives with which we are necessarily preoccupied. The question of "why" is a more profound proposition and one with which we spend significantly less time. QUIP represented a space in which education abroad practitioners could step beyond the daily grind to analyze, deconstruct, and reconstruct the philosophical and political basis for our endeavors.
CEA CAPA's work is rooted in global cities - thus, we are engaged in situational learning in urban spaces, geographically specific contexts in which we teach and study. However, the nature of these cities transcends those spaces, and we are, therefore, inevitably drawn towards broader global connections. The demands of QUIP encouraged us to consider and recalibrate this complex proposition. Developing learning objectives that integrated local and global perspectives led towards a focus on the hidden histories of cities and, at the same time, globally networked learning that enabled students to work together across centers and locations.
In short, improvement is achieved, certainly, by doing things better but also, and critically, by understanding the theoretical basis upon which we build. Without that intellectual validation, education abroad will not achieve parity of esteem with mainstream academia. Many of our colleagues in universities and colleges will continue to see what we do as a pleasant addition, only marginally relevant, to the real work of the university.
That peripheral status is a critical reason why growth in education abroad (pre-pandemic of course) has been painfully slow - somewhere around 3% a year. Participation of under-represented groups has similarly crept up by very small increments. In fact, the growth rate roughly reflects the overall expansion of higher education in the USA. We have not won the academic argument for the centrality of international engagement in the intellectual and personal development of emerging adults. This situation derives, I believe, from a discourse with limited credibility in academia. We talk about cross-cultural learning when what we do is take students from country to country. Soggy notions of culture, however defined, are not geographically contained. The mistaken assumption that countries and cultures align is embedded in practice and pedagogy. Hyperbole litters the rhetoric of education abroad, inflated claims that stand up to no serious analysis. What QUIP does or did was to demand some serious thought. The great value was that, if taken seriously, review processes took us beyond the inherited cliches of our work.
That is why I believe that QUIP is so important. Organizations and "providers" can insist upon their seriousness and commitment as much as they like. Marketing departments can generate alliterative hyperbole and nice pictures of students jumping (why is this so common?). Self-congratulatory rhetoric makes us feel better about ourselves but will do little to impress without some independent and external enforcement. Wider participation in QUIP would, I think, have led to greater support from faculty, demonstrable credibility, and consequently, a growth in participation.
Why Did We Do the QUIP If It's Not Funny?
QUIP required a comprehensive self-study and subsequent external review. It is time consuming, demanding, and complex in that it requires participation of colleagues across departments and, in our case, across seven countries. So, why bother?
One obvious reason is that, if successful, there are recognition benefits. The organization has demonstrated that it conforms with standards developed over years by peers who have considered in detail the many elements that combine to make effective, safe, and stimulating learning experiences in other countries. There are, at the same time, questions about how the organization interacts with colleagues and competitors, operational ethics, policies towards staff and faculty, and so on. The QUIP seal of approval has, therefore, some obvious marketing benefits.
That in itself is a worthwhile exercise, but, in practice, there is significantly more to be learned or gained through the process. Self-study, for example, involves input from across the whole organization or institution. We have all given, or been subject to, the morale boosting speech that stresses the fact that we are a team, working together for common purpose. That is, as we all know, true at some level but for some staff it is an abstraction, not a felt reality. In contributing to the process, staff come to recognize that their role, however departmentalized, is part of a broader mission and vision. We step outside of the silo in which we work and see the interaction of the parts that create the whole. This has perceptible impact upon staff motivation; it offers a mechanism for understanding the collective purposes for which we strive.
Could this be done outside of the formal structure of external review? The answer is obviously yes, but will it be done without the stimulus of enforced introspection demanded by external validation? Maybe. But I return to our daily reality. Will we, so busy with doing, make time for thinking? At its best, QUIP takes us beyond daily obligations.
Few of us I suspect came into international education because of a passion for administration. At some point or another, we were motivated by ideologies and ideals. QUIP offers (or offered) a means for reconnection with core purposes and beliefs.
QUIP and Quips
I can attest to the fact that quips are more amusing than QUIP. That said, the standards embedded in QUIP represent what we strive to be and to do in our educational sector. That is not to say that they are beyond critique. There has always been a whiff of neo-colonialism in that what is expected of overseas organizations is made in America. That is not really a complaint but a consequence of the fact that education abroad, as we currently conceive it, is a product of US higher education, designed to meet the needs of American undergraduates.
International education, on the other hand, in other national contexts may be designed to meet quite different situations. Elsewhere students seek to gain a full degree from another country in which universities might be perceived as having greater prestige than those at home. Demand for higher education at home may also exceed supply while, at the same time, a growing middle class can afford to send their offspring overseas to study abroad. Qualifications obtained abroad may be seen as of greater benefit in domestic job markets. A combination of these factors has generated considerable growth in the numbers of students from, for example, China and India who seek to graduate from universities predominantly in the US, UK, and Australia.
There are, of course, quality standards in this form of international education. Mechanisms to ensure welfare, health, and safety, effective pre-departure briefing, and orientation should be expected (if not always delivered). Ethical recruitment that gives applicants accurate information and selects them on the basis that they are qualified to succeed is another quality imperative. However, unlike US education abroad, there is no obligation to consider curriculum integration with universities at home. Students do not transfer part of their learning abroad into another system. The degree with which they return has an independent status and value.
Forum standards are not wholly relevant to that form of education abroad and there is, ultimately, nothing wrong in that. Indeed, there is strength in specificity. Forum standards are designed for a specific kind of educational experience that is invented in America and delivered abroad.
There are more troubling neo-colonial implications in the propagation of "comprehensive internationalization" as a measure of quality across the globe. That objective aligns standards of excellence with those of the Global North. Universities elsewhere, if they are to be considered quality institutions, are required to place internationalization at the center of a comprehensive strategy. Should they prioritize other local or regional needs, they are, according to criteria developed in Washington DC, not reaching the standards required of a quality institution. Thus, the American Council on Education argues that "increasingly, internationalization is... a central feature of a quality education" and, according to NAFSA, "to be a higher education institution of distinction in the twenty-first century requires systematic institutional attention to internationalization."
To their credit, Forum's standards as expressed through QUIP have not assumed such a neo-colonial perspective. Its roots are in US education abroad. They have wisely resisted the temptation to create a global ideology out of national requirements and priorities.
Conclusion
We do not exist merely to survive or propagate ourselves. We do not sell widgets or machinery. Ultimately, we do not sell programs. We sell ideas. We seek to increase participation because we believe that, in so doing, we will, in however limited a way, make a difference to individual sensibilities and ultimately to the health of society. In requiring self-assessment and introspection, I believe that QUIP has helped organizations to reconnect with the core purposes of education abroad.
Whether we choose to recognize it or not, we are in the business of politics. The ideologies that underpin our work are rooted in the belief that countries are inter-connected, that borders are artificial, and that we have more in common than those things that divide us. The pandemic has demonstrated that reality in a manner we could not have anticipated. Nevertheless, the interdependence of nations is, in the current climate, contested and made controversial by militant parochialism and radical nationalism in many parts of the world.
Our beliefs, whether we call them internationalism or cosmopolitanism, are in direct conflict with those ideologies. We are committed to the concept that interactions with those who may speak or act differently from us, or have different assumptions, are enriching and enlightening, not alien or frightening. Encounters with the unfamiliar make us better people, more curious, richer in sensibility. That which is strange to us is not a threat.
This may have become just a little harder to remember.
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